Development of the containment policy:

  A coherent, readable history of the Cold War - taking advantage of the flood of documents still coming out of archives on both sides of the Cold War Iron Curtain - is provided by John Lewis Gaddis.
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The conflict existed in the ambitious hopes and paranoid fears of Josef Stalin on the Soviet side, and the determination of the U.S. and its western allies to oppose those ambitions to the extent that they existed beyond the gains achieved by the Soviet Army in WW-II. Thus, the roots of the Cold War extended back into WW-II.

Stalin and his sycophantic lieutenants had every reason to expect further advances for communism in general and in the scope of Soviet control and influence in particular.

  Gaddis finds it impossible to assign a particular date or event as the start of the Cold War. However, it is clear that the conflict existed in the ambitious hopes and paranoid fears of Josef Stalin on the Soviet side, and the determination of the U.S. and its western allies to oppose those ambitions to the extent that they existed beyond the gains achieved by the Soviet Army in WW-II. Thus, the roots of the Cold War extend back into WW-II, and its beginnings were shaped by the outcome of WW-II on the ground. The differing worldviews of Stalin and the western leaders made it inevitable.

  "[WW-II] had been won by a coalition whose principal members were already at war -- ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily -- with one another."

  Pres. Roosevelt ("FDR") had assured Stalin at the 1943 Teheran Conference that American troops would be withdrawn from Europe within two years of the end of WW-II, and the pace of U.S. withdrawal was indeed dramatic. Soviet troops, of course, remained.
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  Stalin and his sycophantic lieutenants had every reason to expect further advances for communism in general and in the scope of Soviet control and influence in particular. As a result of the two recent world war conflicts between capitalist powers - the apparent failures of capitalism during the Great Depression - and the gallant opposition to the fascist powers by communist forces during the war, the communist ideology commanded widespread respect, sympathy and active support in West Europe, within the U.S., and elsewhere in the world.
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Ultimately, a worldview twisted by Marxist ideological expectations undermined Stalin's plans for the expansion of Soviet influence into West Europe and the Middle East.

  However, security concerns were paramount for Stalin. It was important that further advances should occur without any substantial risks to the Soviet Communist regime, to the Soviet Union, and most important, to Stalin, himself. The Soviet Union  needed time to recover from the ravages of WW-II. These were Stalin's most vital concerns, and they initially reinforced a cautious approach to expansion.
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  Ultimately, a worldview twisted by Marxist ideological expectations undermined Stalin's plans for the expansion of Soviet influence into West Europe and the Middle East. In spite of excellent intelligence about Western plans to strengthen cooperation in West Europe, and the active involvement of the U.S. in opposing Soviet expansionist efforts in northern Iran, Turkey, Greece, and the Eastern Mediterranean, Stalin and his lieutenants calmly awaited the inevitable breakup of the capitalist imperialists and a new conflict between the U.S. and the British Empire.

  "From Stalin's perspective, then, the long-term forces of history would compensate for the catastrophe World War II had inflicted upon the Soviet Union. It would not be necessary to confront the Americans and British directly in order to achieve his objectives. He could simply wait for the capitalists to begin quarreling with one another, and for the disgusted Europeans to embrace communism as an alternative."

  U.S. objectives, too, had to do with security - but included economic security as well as military. The U.S. would need allies to achieve these security goals, just as it needed them during WW-II. A return to isolationism had finally been recognized as untenable.
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  Diplomacy during and after the war was directed at establishing the international institutions and arrangements that would assure collective security without war and the avoidance of a return of the Great Depression. The establishment of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were the first steps in that process and were taken before any perception of a need to contain Soviet ambitions.

  "To frame the issue in its most basic terms, Roosevelt and Churchill envisaged a postwar settlement which would balance power while embracing principles. The idea was to prevent any new war by avoiding the mistakes that led to World War II: they would ensure cooperation among the great powers, revive Wilson's League in the form of a new United Nations collective security organization, and encourage the maximum possible political self-determination and economic integration, so that the causes of war as they understood them would in time disappear. Stalin's was a very different vision: a settlement that would secure his own and his country's security while simultaneously encouraging the rivalries among capitalists that he believed would bring about a new war. Capitalist fratricide, in turn, would ensure the eventual Soviet domination of Europe. The first was a multilateral vision that assumed the possibility of compatible interests, even among competing systems. The second assumed no such thing."

Every step that Stalin took to fulfill his ambitions brought responses from the western nations that limited his opportunities until his scope for further advances in the West and Near East was fully contained.

  Then, there was the atom bomb - held only by the U.S. at that time. Stalin deliberately adopted a pose of indifference towards this weapon, but he drove his scientists to get it for him. Until then, Soviet advances would have to be limited to the point where the West imposed physical opposition.
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  Thus, every step that Stalin took to fulfill his ambitions brought responses from the western nations that limited his opportunities until his scope for further advances in the West and Near East was fully contained.

• The Red Army took brutal revenge on the population of eastern Germany, stripped them of much of their remaining industrial assets and imposed substantial reparations obligations on them.

• Stalin demanded territory from Iran and Turkey and bases in Turkey that would give him control of the Turkish straits. He also demanded naval bases on the North African shore of the eastern Mediterranean, and participation in the occupation of Japan.

• He ruthlessly established total control over the nations of East Europe as far as his troops had advanced - including over Poland and, in February, 1948, Czechoslovakia - breaking every treaty promise he had made concerning those states.

• He imposed a blockade on the western sectors of Berlin.

• His efforts to obtain the atomic bomb were successful on August 29, 1949.

  What he got were responses that thwarted his ambitions and increased his paranoid sense of insecurity.

• The Soviets suffered a considerable loss of sympathy - of what today is called "soft power" - both in the West and among the peoples in the new Soviet satellite nations. There was a growing popular skepticism of Communist ideology, and western leaders became increasingly wary about Soviet Union intentions.

• The Soviets were excluded from the occupation of Japan.

• Stalin's ambitions in the Middle East were bluntly opposed, and the U.S. Sixth Fleet was indefinitely deployed to the eastern Mediterranean. Stalin quietly retreated from northern Iran and chose to bide his time.

• George F. Kennan's analysis in his 8,000 word "long telegram" from Moscow on February 22, 1946, explained Soviet ambitions and the need for a policy of long term containment to thwart them.

• Western Germany was consolidated and eventually rehabilitated.

• The Truman Doctrine - announced on March 12, 1947 - provided military and economic assistance to Greece and Turkey, and established as U.S. policy the support of "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

• The Marshall Plan for European recovery - announced in June, 1947 - was developed by Kennan and Sec. of State George C. Marshall committing the U.S. to the reconstruction of Europe.

• The Berlin airlift - committed the U.S. to the freedom of the western occupation zones in Berlin.

• Josep Broz Tito refused to accept Soviet domination, leading to a break with Moscow in June, 1948, that quickly qualified Yugoslavia for U.S. economic assistance.

• The Federal Republic of Germany was established with its capitol in Bonn.

• The NATO treaty committed the U.S. for the first time to the peacetime defense of western Europe.

• Pres. Truman responded to the Soviet atom bomb test by upgrading U.S. and NATO conventional forces, stationing U.S. forces permanently in West Europe, expanding the U.S. atomic bomb program, and initiating the U.S. hydrogen bomb program. Stalin, of course, had long since initiated the Soviet hydrogen bomb program.

• Containment.

  "By the time Stalin grudgingly lifted the Berlin blockade in May, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty had been signed in Washington and the Federal Republic of Germany had been proclaimed in Bonn -- another result that Stalin had not wanted. Tito's heresy remained unpunished, thereby demonstrating that it was possible for communists themselves to achieve a degree of independence from Moscow. And there was no sign whatever of the disagreements among capitalists -- or of the Anglo-American war -- that Stalin's ideological illusions had led him to expect. His strategy for gaining control of postwar Europe lay in ruins, and he had largely himself to blame."

The second front in the East:

  In the East, however, the Soviet Union was suddenly and unexpectedly presented with opportunities to weaken the U.S. and the western European powers.
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At this time, "international communism really was a monolithic movement directed from Moscow." Moreover, as was becoming increasingly clear, Western governments really were effectively penetrated by Soviet spies and communist sympathizers.

  A victorious Mao Zedong proclaimed the formation of the Peoples Republic of China in October, 1949. Western hopes that Communist China and Mao would become another Yugoslavia and Tito were quickly dashed. (That hope would be fulfilled, however, in the 1970s.) Mao was a committed Marxist-Leninist, and saw his own ambitions aligned with those of Stalin. Mao venerated Stalin, and intended to emulate Stalinist methods of rule. He, too, faced Western - and especially U.S. - opposition to the spread of his influence - in Taiwan, in French Indochina and on the Korean Peninsula - and he could expect Soviet support for his efforts in those regions.
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  A united front was quickly formed between Stalin - now in possession of atomic weapons - and Mao. They agreed to a division of their efforts, with China spreading its influence and supporting communist forces in the East, and the Soviets doing the same in the West. The Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950 was the result.
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  Thus, at this time, "international communism really was a monolithic movement directed from Moscow." Moreover, as was becoming increasingly clear, Western governments really were effectively penetrated by Soviet spies and communist sympathizers. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy saw demagogic opportunity in the resulting fears, and became an increasing political burden to the Truman and thereafter to the Eisenhower administration, until he finally self-destructed in 1954.
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  Perceptions of Western weakness encouraged Stalin to approve an effort by Kim Il-sung of North Korea to conquer South Korea. He also encouraged Ho Chi Minh to intensify efforts to overturn French control of Indochina. A second front against Western interests was thus opened in the East.
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  Truman's rapid and effective response in Korea caught Stalin by surprise. In the event, Mao came to the rescue of Kim Il-sung, but Mao, too, would ultimately be surprised by the effectiveness of Western military opposition.
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  Much to Stalin's delight, the war became a stalemate - a battle of attrition - along a line roughly in the area of the 38th parallel from which it had begun. Soviet and American pilots were dueling in the skies over North Korea - the only time any of the military forces of the two nations directly engaged each other during the Cold War. But it was China that was bearing the brunt of the burdens of the conflict for the communist side. The conflict continued its bloody course until an armistice was agreed upon in July, 1953 - about four months after Stalin's death.
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Mao's ambitions in Korea and Taiwan were frustrated, and his efforts to remake China would fail disastrously.

Kennan and George Orwell - author of the influential book "1984" - envisioned a bleak and dangerous future.

  The hopes that both sides had entertained after WW-II had been dashed.
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  Stalin could make no further advances in Europe or the Middle East, and all his efforts merely stiffened Western opposition - which increased his own paranoid sense of insecurity. Mao's ambitions in Korea and Taiwan were frustrated, and his efforts to remake China would fail disastrously.
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  Western hopes for a secure post-war world were similarly dashed. Fears were increasing exponentially as the harsh realities of the Cold War world during the nuclear age became evident. Kennan and George Orwell - author of the influential book "1984" - envisioned a bleak and dangerous future for mankind.
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Bluffing with atomic weapons:

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  Both sides found that their atomic weapons were useless as weapons of war. And, both sides were thus severely restrained - fighting the Cold War as a long limited war rather than as an all out unlimited war such as had become all too common since the Napoleonic Wars. The advent of the hydrogen bomb merely emphasized this aspect of the Cold War. Gaddis provides some details as to how this sobering reality came to be recognized by the various leaders on both sides.
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The effort to keep up with U.S. advances in weaponry imposed a heavy drain on the limited resources of the Soviet Union, and accelerated its financial and economic collapse.

  However, the initial U.S. monopoly over atomic weaponry - as long as it lasted - did have profound consequences. It permitted the U.S. to concentrate its financial resources on the strengthening of its war-ravaged allies and on its rapid conversion back to a peacetime economy. It also induced a sense of caution even in Stalin - although that bloody despot did everything possible to bluff the West into believing that he had no fear of atomic weapons.
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  Even as late as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, American predominance  in atomic weaponry and delivery systems powerfully influenced events. And, throughout the Cold War, the effort to keep up with U.S. advances in weaponry imposed a heavy drain on the limited resources of the Soviet Union, and accelerated its financial and economic collapse.
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Eisenhower knew from professional experience in WW-II that the initiation of a major conflict would almost certainly unleash atomic weapons - so the deterrence of such a conflict was the only practical way to avoid using them.

Eisenhower did not want the U.S. to be tied down, drained and demoralized by a series of battles of attrition in small war conflicts initiated at the discretion of the Soviet Union and China

  Pres. Eisenhower - an experienced general and poker player - also knew how to bluff. He deliberately committed the U.S. to the use of atomic weapons in any major conflict in order to prevent any such conflict from occurring. He knew from professional experience in WW-II that the initiation of a major conflict would almost certainly unleash atomic weapons - so the deterrence of such a conflict was the only practical way to avoid using them. This also enabled him to avoid much of the great expense of preparing to fight a major conventional conflict.
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  Eisenhower also pressed his military advisors to find ways to use atomic weapons in Korea and similar limited conflicts. Again, effective deterrence was the objective. He did not want the U.S. to be tied down, drained and demoralized by a series of battles of attrition in small war conflicts initiated at the discretion of the Soviet Union and China - which was precisely the Sino-Soviet strategy of that time.
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  Gaddis does not speculate about what role this may have played in the quick termination of the military conflict in Korea about four months after Eisenhower became president. There were many other factors influencing Soviet and Chinese policy in Korea at that time - especially the death of Stalin. The Soviet leadership was preoccupied  in sorting out the succession after Stalin's death, with Nikita Khrushchev ultimately coming out on top. Mao and Kim Il-sung had not received as much Soviet aid as they had expected. China was finding the conflict unexpectedly costly.
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  Khrushchev, too, sought advantage from bluffing with atomic weapons. He, too, was appalled by their reality, but he was determined to use them in diplomatic maneuvers "to compensate for national weakness." That weakness was primarily in the great inferiority of Soviet delivery systems throughout the 1950s.
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  With the advent of intercontinental nuclear missiles, the risks of such bluffs increased exponentially. The successful launch of the sputnik artificial Earth  satellite in 1957 helped Khrushchev credibly cover up his continuing weakness and supported his threats to unleash an extensive, accurate arsenal of nuclear missiles.
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  Khrushchev threatened to employ "rocket weapons" during the Suez crisis in 1956. When Israel, Britain and France subsequently withdrew from Suez, he viewed his bluff as a success. Eisenhower's threat of economic sanctions against Israel, Britain and France to force the withdrawal was not immediately publicly known.
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  Khrushchev next used such threats to back up his demands that the Allies evacuate Berlin within six months - but Eisenhower was unmoved. Instead, Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to visit the U.S. - but a visit to Disney Land was denied him.
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  The U-2 spy planes began flying over Soviet territory on July 4, 1956, and ultimately revealed the lack of substance behind Khrushchev's bluffs. It took over 20 hours to fuel Russian liquid fueled intercontinental missiles, and Russia had only 6 launch sites. Almost four years later, Russian antiaircraft rocket capabilities had improved sufficiently to shoot down a U-2, but by then the U.S. was ready to launch its observation satellites.
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  The notorious "missile gap" that John F. Kennedy emphasized to help win his narrow election victory in 1960 thus never existed. However, Pres. Kennedy, too, knew how to bluff, and was slow to let the American people in on the secret. He had other troubles during those first few months of his administration: These troubles included the failed Bay of Pigs landing in Cuba; Russia's first man in orbit; a botched summit conference during which Khrushchev renewed his Berlin ultimatum; the construction of the Berlin Wall; and finally, Khrushchev's announcement of a resumption of nuclear testing which would involve the explosion of a monstrous hydrogen weapon.
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  Kennedy finally countered by revealing what the U.S. already knew of the actual limitations of Russia's nuclear warfare capabilities. The U.S. was still far ahead in delivery systems. Khrushchev's bluff had been called. Khrushchev admitted privately that Russia was a decade behind U.S. missile technology.
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Cuban Missile Crisis:

The Soviet leadership was thrilled at the unexpected success of the spontaneous Marxist-Leninist Cuban insurgency in the Western Hemisphere right on the doorstep of the U.S. They sought means of leveraging this success into communist takeovers of other Latin American nations.

In the event, Khrushchev was successful. Although the U.S. blockade forced him to withdraw his missiles, he did extract a public commitment from Kennedy that there would be no further U.S. efforts to invade Cuba.

  This was the background of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet leadership was thrilled at the unexpected success of the spontaneous Marxist-Leninist Cuban insurgency in the Western Hemisphere right on the doorstep of the U.S. They sought means of leveraging this success into communist takeovers of other Latin American nations.
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  Khrushchev intended to deploy intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba to secure Cuba from any second attempt to overthrow Castro and maintain Cuba as a secure base for further operations in Latin America. After all, the U.S. already had such missiles in Britain, Italy and Turkey aimed at Russia.
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  In the event, Khrushchev was successful. Although the U.S. blockade forced him to withdraw his missiles, he did extract a public commitment from Kennedy that there would be no further U.S. efforts to invade Cuba. In addition, the U.S. missiles in Turkey - now obsolete - were quietly removed.
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  Castro survived as the world's longest living communist despot. He always expressed disappointment about the peaceful resolution of the crisis that otherwise threatened all sides with massive destruction - and the incineration of Cuba. However, everybody else found the crisis a sobering event.

  "This improbable series of events, universally regarded now as the closest the world came, during the second half of the 20th century, to a third world war, provided a glimpse of a future no one wanted: of a conflict projected beyond restraint, reason, and the likelihood of survival."

  For an earlier view concentrating on the beginnings of the Cold War through the Cuban Missile Crisis, see Gaddis, "We Now Know,"

MAD:

  Total reliance on nuclear weaponry repelled Kennedy. He began a search for strategic options.
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As Eisenhower had hoped, nuclear terror had a very sobering impact on all the adversaries.

  Sec. of Defense Robert S. McNamara was convinced this should be possible. However, the Cuban Missile Crisis quickly demonstrated the accuracy of the Eisenhower assessment. Any nuclear conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries would quickly become uncontrollable.
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  McNamara thus quickly shifted to the other extreme. He decided to ratchet up the level of terror in order to prevent a major war from breaking out. By intentionally targeting cities, there would be "Mutually Assured Destruction." The plan had the appropriate acronym, "MAD." As Eisenhower had hoped, nuclear terror had a very sobering impact on all the adversaries.

  "[A] series of Soviet-American agreements began to emerge, at first tacit, later explicit, acknowledging the danger nuclear weapons posed to the capitalist and communist worlds alike. These included an unwritten understanding that both sides would tolerate satellite reconnaissance, the vindication of another Eisenhower insight, which was that by learning to live with transparency -- "open skies" -- the United States and the Soviet Union could minimize the possibility of surprise attack."

  There followed a Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 barring tests in the atmosphere, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, the Strategic Arms Limitation Interim Agreement in 1972 restricting the numbers of ballistic missiles, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 banning effective defenses against long-range ballistic missiles.
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  Thus, MAD was institutionalized as the basis for strategic stability during the Cold War. Despite radically differing ideologies and backgrounds, the mutual terror of nuclear weapons made each side see "that they shared a stake in each other's survival."
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Ideological and economic conflict:

  The ideological and economic aspects of the Cold War became increasingly important - and were ultimately determinative - as the stalemate on the nuclear and conventional military warfare fronts developed.
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  The Cold War was the culmination of the competition between two distinct views concerning "how best to govern industrializing societies in such a way as to benefit all of the people who lived within them." Gaddis sketches this ideological battle.
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  In the West, 19th century leaders like Benjamin Disraeli in Britain and Otto von Bismarck in Germany had already responded to Marxist influence with government programs designed to mitigate the harshness of 19th century capitalism. Then, during WW-I, Pres. Woodrow Wilson set forth a countervailing U.S. ideology of political self-determination, economic liberalization, and collective international security.
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  His views were set forth in his "Fourteen Points" speech in January, 1918. A revolution based on democratic principles and free markets "would open the way for those at the bottom to liberate themselves" in a far more reliable manner than dependence on the benevolence of some despot at the top.
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  However, Wilson's countrymen rejected his vision at that time - with disastrous consequences. After WW-I, they rejected membership in the League of Nations, and chose Republican governance and protectionism. In 1922, the Republicans raised tariff barriers to trade war levels - the highest of any nation except Spain.

  The U.S. had become the world's premier creditor nation as a result of WW-I, and this return to protectionism ultimately undermined economic developments and finances worldwide. See, James, "End of Globalization." With the U.S. market closed to them, there was no way for dollar debtors to earn the wherewithal to service their dollar debts.

 Britain and France were victorious but financially shattered by WW-I, leaving the U.S. as the strongest economic and financial power in the world. However, the U.S. determinedly rejected the burdens of a leadership role. (The U.S. not only greatly restricted international access to its markets, its new Federal Reserve System adopted a monetary policy that effectively undermined the automatic adjustment mechanisms of the international gold standard.)
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  Financial and economic crises descended into the Great Depression - and authoritarianism spread in extent, power and aggressiveness. The democratic powers determinedly retreated from responsibility prior to WW-II. It looked like some form of authoritarianism would indeed be "the wave of the future."

  "Wilson, at the end of World War II, would have looked like a failed idealist. He had compromised so often in negotiating the 1919 Versailles settlement -- by accepting its harsh treatment of Germany, its deference to the territorial claims of victorious allies, and its thinly disguised perpetuation of colonialism -- that it had hardly been an endorsement of political self-determination and economic liberalization. His own countrymen had refused to join his proudest creation, the League of Nations, thereby severely weakening it. Capitalism had revived precariously after the war, only to crash in 1929, setting off the worst global depression ever. Authoritarianism, meanwhile, was on the rise, first in Italy under Benito Mussolini, then in Imperial Japan, and finally -- most ominously -- in Germany, where, having come to power constitutionally in 1933, Adolf Hitler immediately abolished the constitution by which he had done so."

What doomed the Marxist-Leninist cause was the change wrought by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the resulting willingness of the U.S. to accept the burdens of international leadership.

  The outcome of WW-II made it appear that communism would be the dominant form of triumphant authoritarianism. The ideal of equality (then as now) was used by leftists to attack economic and political liberalism, and it was far from certain which would triumph. (Of course, those who surrender liberty can expect at best only the "equality of the barracks" - and subjection by their ruling elite.)
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  It was not any fundamental change in the means of production that ultimately doomed the Marxist-Leninist cause, Gaddis points out. What doomed it was the change wrought by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the resulting willingness of the U.S. to accept the burdens of international leadership. It had become indisputably obvious that U.S. security depended on the security of democracy and capitalism elsewhere in the world.
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  Three new international organizations - the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United Nations - were devised by the FDR administration as instruments through which the U.S. would lead European reconstruction, assure worldwide economic stability, and insure national security from aggression. Tariff barriers would be lowered to end the pre-WW-II trade war and revive international trade. (After all, with Europe shattered by WW-II, the U.S. faced little economic competition at that time - materially reducing domestic protectionist pressures.)

  "Together, these institutions were intended to lessen the possibility of future depressions by lowering tariff barriers, stabilizing currencies, and coordinating government planning with the workings of markets, while providing the means by which the international community would contain and if necessary defeat future aggressors. They pulled together two parts of Wilson's program: economic liberalization and collective security. The third, political self-determination, would have to wait, F.D.R. believed, at least for those nations and peoples who had fallen, or were likely to fall, under Soviet rule. The important thing was to win the war, secure the peace, and ensure recovery. Then, he hoped, there would be room for democracy."

• Stalin expressed his Marxist-Leninist conviction that capitalist inequality was unjust - that capitalist conflict was inevitable - that the Soviet people must continue their sacrifices to prepare for the next great conflict - and that peace could only come if communism was triumphant worldwide.
• Churchill warned America and the western world of the need to deter further Soviet expansion beyond the "iron curtain" already drawn across Central Europe.
• Truman responded with the Truman Doctrine, providing aid to Greece and Turkey which were already fighting against communist forces and had already been subjected to Soviet threats, and with an implied promise of U.S. assistance to other victims of aggression and intimidation.

  The U.S. had recognized the divisions of the Cold War world and had undertaken leadership of the free world. It would wage the ideological and economic battle under Wilsonian principles. The Marshall Plan soon followed.
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Stalin's heavy hand then used the same Leninist tactics - the same terror - to control his new satellite conquests. Mao would impose even worse terrors in China.

  Communist reality was far different from Communist ideology. Gaddis sketches the horrors of Stalin's regime as it consolidated power in the 1930s. The Red Army reflected this "culture of brutality" as it spread into central Europe and especially into eastern Germany. Stalin's heavy hand then used the same Leninist tactics - the same terror - to control his new satellite conquests. Mao would impose even worse terrors in China (as would lesser communist despots in North Korea and Cambodia). The "proletarians" clearly had more to fear from communist "chains" than from those of the capitalists.

  "By one estimate, a million East European  communists were purged in some way between 1949 and 1953. Much the same thing was happening within the U.S.S.R.: Stalin's last years saw an ever-widening circle of arrests, trials, executions, and where these were not easily justified, arranged 'accidents.' At the time of his death, Soviet prisons were fuller than they had ever been."

Assistance was conditioned on cooperation among European recipients

Occupation directives from Washington were quickly modified by the military authorities on the spot to deal with the differing conditions in occupied nations.

    The U.S., too, relied abroad on what worked at home - political and economic freedom, legally enforceable private property rights, rule by consent of the governed, rule-of-law legal systems, and accountability fortified by a free press. An ideology of hope would oppose one of terror. A system of individual liberty and initiative would oppose a system of centralized command. A system of capitalist abundance would oppose a system of socialist shortages.
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  The Marshall Plan not only applied U.S. resources to facilitate economic revival, it substantially undercut all the old European rivalries. Assistance was conditioned on cooperation among European recipients. (A major reason for Marshall Plan success - and the failure of economic assistance in third world nations - was that Europe was still rich in human capital. Most of the human capital in Europe existed in its middle aged and older men and had survived the war.)
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  Pragmatic spontaneity was characteristic of U.S. occupation policies. Occupation directives from Washington were quickly modified by the military authorities on the spot to deal with the differing conditions in occupied nations. Socialists were readily accepted as allies in the effort to contain communism. NATO was a European idea, devised to assure military security for Western Europe. It was the first U.S. peacetime military alliance since the only other one in the nation's history - with France - was terminated in 1800.
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  The Soviet Union, on the other hand, could offer neither resources nor spontaneity nor hope - only terror and the heavy hand of Stalinist repression. Stalin was "a lonely, deluded, and fearful old man, addicted to ill-informed pontifications on genetics, economics, subordinates, and -- oddly -- American movies."
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Beria:

Stalin's successors found that Marxism could not exist without the terror of Stalinism.

  Stalin's successors tried to liberate Marxism from Stalinism.  However, they found, Gaddis notes, that Marxism could not exist without the terror of Stalinism. There was no other way to prevent the proletariat from opting out of Marxism.
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  Lavrenti Beria, the chief of the KGB - the formidable Soviet secret police and intelligence agency - was the first to try. He suspended Stalin's last purges - instructed North Korea and China to arrange an armistice to end the Korean War - and proposed acceptance of a capitalist unified Germany on condition that Germany remain outside NATO.
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  However, the East German "proletariat" tried to opt out of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist regime of Walter Ulbricht. Thousands had been emigrating to West Germany to escape the disastrous economic conditions of their communist system. Now, they rioted in East Berlin and elsewhere in East Germany.
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  This fatally undermined Beria's position and opened the way for Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power. Beria was arrested, tried, convicted and shot. Russian tanks took control in East Berlin, and Khrushchev aligned the Soviet Union closely with Ulbricht's repressive regime in East Germany.
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Khrushchev:

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  Khrushchev removed his co-leaders - Georgii Malenkov and Vyacheslav Malotov - within the next two years, but he did not kill them. He was attempting to remove Stalinism so that he might have a chance to reform communism - in the Soviet Union and around the world.
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For communism to triumph, it would have to justify real popular support.

Being a communist was indeed "inseparable from being a Stalinist," Khrushchev now conceded.

  In a dramatic speech in February, 1956, to the shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev candidly catalogued and denounced Stalin's crimes, revealing the true nature of the Stalinist regime. It was not enough to rule by terror. For communism to triumph, it would have to justify real popular support.

  "But the system he was trying to preserve had itself been based, since the time of Marx and Engels, on the claim to be error-free. That was what it meant to have discovered the engine that drove history forward. A movement based on science had little place for confession, contrition, and the possibility of redemption. The problems Khrushchev created for himself and for the international communist movement, therefore, began almost from the moment he finished speaking."

  There was widespread consternation in communist ranks, both in Russia and in its satellites, as well as abroad. In Poland, political prisoners were released, Stalinists were removed from power, and Wladyslaw Gomulka - recently purged by Stalin - was reinstated in power. Khrushchev was furious, but ultimately decided against forceful intervention.
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  Hoping to avoid further trouble in the satellites, Khrushchev removed the Hungarian Stalinist leader in July, 1956. Mátyás Rákosi was told that he was "ill" and would have to go to Moscow for "treatment." By October, the Hungarians were in full scale rebellion against both communism and Soviet control.
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  Under pressure from an outraged Mao Zedong, Khrushchev ordered the Red Army to crush the rebellion. Repression was evidently the only way Marxist-Leninists could rule. Being a communist was indeed "inseparable from being a Stalinist," Khrushchev now conceded.
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Mao:

Mao coaxed dissidents to reveal themselves and then purged them.

  Mao Zedong was not impressed with Stalin's successors. He never had any doubts of the need for Stalinist repression. With his "thousand flowers" blooming campaign, he coaxed dissidents to reveal themselves and then purged them. With Stalin's death, he encouraged a "cult of personality" centered around himself, and put himself forward as the leader of the international communist movement. So far, so good.
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  However, his worldview was twisted by Marxist expectations, just like that of Stalin. Without a clue about economic reality, he led China into his disastrous "Great Leap Forward" campaign. He sacrificed much of his agricultural economy in favor of inefficient backyard steel furnaces in a vain effort to quickly match the West in industrial production. As a result, China got neither food nor usable steel, and tens of millions died in the resulting famine.
 &

The Berlin Wall:

Nowhere else in the world was it so clear as to which system was favored by ordinary people.

  The East German population declined from about 19 million to about 17 million in the dozen years before 1961. About 2.7 million East Germans fled through Berlin to the West - disproportionately including the skilled and well educated. Nowhere else in the world was it so clear as to which system was favored by ordinary people - the "proletariat." And the tide of emigration was rising.
 &

A wall would be a terrible admission of defeat, and many communist leaders actually believed their own propaganda about the ultimate success of communist economic systems.

Western leaders, too, were relieved at the elimination of the dangerous situation in Berlin.

At the height of socialist political expansion, socialist systems around the world were rigidly tied to disastrous socialist economic policies and horrendous levels of repression.

  Ulbricht had been planning to build a wall since 1952, but had been restrained by Soviet leadership. A wall would be a terrible admission of defeat, and many communist leaders actually believed their own propaganda about the ultimate success of communist economic systems. By mid-1961, however, with the East German economy on the verge of collapse, they decided that the Wall was the only answer.
 &
  The Wall stabilized the situation in East Germany, reduced the importance of Berlin as an escape route, and so eliminated the pressure on Khrushchev to try to force the West out of their zone. Western leaders, too, were relieved at the elimination of this dangerous situation, and quickly spotlighted the Wall as "the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the communist system."
 &
  The Great Depression had not returned - and capitalists were no longer in conflict with each other - and the Soviet empire had to build walls to keep its people from fleeing. The capitalist West had pragmatically and with spontaneity sought and found corrections for the failed economic and geopolitical policies of the past. There would be no more trade wars to destroy international finances and commerce, and nationalism would be sufficiently restrained to eliminate military conflicts. However, at the height of socialist political expansion, socialist systems around the world were rigidly tied to disastrous socialist economic policies and horrendous levels of repression.

  "Marxism and its successors, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism, cannot be judged on their economic performance alone. The human costs were far more horrendous. These ideologies, when put into practice, may well have brought about the premature deaths, during the 20th century, of almost 100 million people.  The number who survived but whose lives were stunted by these ideas and the repression they justified is beyond estimation."

The end of empire:

&

  The decline of the great European empires had been underway even before WW-II, but that conflict greatly accelerated the process. The Soviet Union and communist China then accelerated the process even more by supporting liberation movements against West European imperial holdings. Within two decades of the end of WW-II, the West European empires were no more - and the Soviet Union was left as the last of the great European imperial states.
 &

  The U.S., too, wanted an end to the empires of its allies. Those empires were a discredit to the West and weakened the European imperial powers themselves. However, European alliances had to be maintained - and there was real risk of instability and communist success in newly independent states.
 &

  A non-aligned "third world" developed. It was composed of nations that played off the Cold War super power adversaries against each other to achieve diplomatic objectives.
 &
  Tito in Yugoslavia kept the Red Army at bay by maintaining cordial relations with the U.S. - which usefully kept its Sixth Fleet offshore of his long coastline. Stalin had to be content with several assassination attempts, all of which failed. Khrushchev, on the other hand, treated Tito as an equal - "a vivid demonstration of the leverage [of] 'non-alignment.'"
 &
  India under Jawaharlal Nehru - socialist, pacifist and determinedly neutral in the Cold War - chose non-alignment, while its adversary Pakistan chose to join in U.S. alliances in central and southeast Asia. China, already wary about Soviet intentions and fearing U.S. encirclement, chose to assist the non-alignment nation movement.
 &
  Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was perhaps the most successful third world leader in employing non-alignment for diplomatic advantage. Egypt and the Suez Canal were of quintessential strategic importance, and Nasser ambitiously sought to parlay that into becoming the principle nationalist leader in the Arab world.
 &
  Nasser gained support from Russia for his vital Aswan Dam project. Nasser then nationalized the Suez Canal, leading to invasion by Britain, France and Israel and the Suez Canal crisis in October, 1956 - occurring at the same time as the Hungarian crisis.
 &
  Eisenhower immediately came down decisively on the side of Egypt. He feared that the invasion would fatally undermine western influence throughout the Arab world and elsewhere in the third world. Nasser emerged victorious, with the dam and a position as the undisputed leader of Arab nationalism.
 &
  Thus, newly freed from subjugation by European imperial powers, third world nations were finding considerable scope for autonomous diplomacy and action.
 &

  The "diplomacy of vapors" was another tactic - used by third world nations that were aligned with one Cold War adversary or the other to gain support from their super power allies. Both Syngman Rhee in South Korea and Kim Il-sung in North Korea maintained considerable domestic autonomy because of the threat that they could collapse if support were withdrawn. "Both Washington and Moscow therefore wound up supporting Korean allies who were embarrassments to them."
 &
  Chiang Kai-shek was another successful practitioner of this dubious diplomatic art. The U.S. became committed to the defense of the Nationalist Chinese islands in the Taiwan Strait.
 &
  However, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam miscalculated - fatally - and was assassinated - leaving the Kennedy administration with a mess on its hands that the U.S. ultimately found immensely costly and irretrievable. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, successfully played off Russia against China - by the late 1960s already increasingly antagonistic towards each other - to obtain the support needed for victory in Vietnam.
 &
  At that time, Leonid Brezhnev had succeeded to power in Moscow. He was increasingly interested in an accommodation with the U.S. that would reduce Russia's Cold War burdens, but the conflict between two minor powers in an obscure corner of Asia "blocked any rational discussion" of other Cold War problems.
 &
  Similarly, Konrad Adenauer of West Germany and Walter Ulbricht of East Germany managed to win substantial autonomy and economic support from their superpower allies - Adenauer by invoking the threat of electoral defeat and Ulbricht by invoking the threat of regime collapse. Germany was the key to the control of Europe.
 &
  The Soviets, in particular, could ill afford the economic assistance they felt obliged to provide for East Germany. Ulbricht goaded Khrushchev into issuing ultimatums in unsuccessful attempts to push the West out of Berlin - and ultimately forced him to approve construction of the Berlin Wall to stem the flow of people fleeing East Germany.
 &

  The most difficult allies for the Cold War super powers were France's Charles de Gaulle and China's Mao Zedong. In the 1960s, they both initiated efforts to break up the bipolar Cold War world by challenging their Cold War alliances.
 &
  De Gaul pulled France out of NATO and attempted at many points to thwart U.S. objectives in Europe. The U.S. responded effectively by patient avoidance of an open rupture. The best option for the U.S. was to simply await the end of de Gaul's term in power and to continue to work with France as best it could.
 &
  De Gaul flaunted French autonomy. He was "the ultimate free rider." He knew that the U.S. and NATO had no choice but to defend France along with the rest of West Europe. Along the way, he rebuilt French national pride after half a century of misadventure and defeat.
 &

  Mao was a far more difficult problem for the Russians. He vied with Stalin's successors for leadership of the worldwide communist movement. He was the ultimate Machiavellian - generating repeated international crises to shore up his grip on power in China and to gain influence in international communist circles. This strategy helped him survive the colossal blunder of his "Great Leap Forward" campaign.
 &
  However, along the way, he rebuilt Chinese national pride after more than a century of humiliation. Ultimately, Chinese troops battled Russian troops over trivial border disputes, and Mao tilted towards the U.S. to blunt Soviet advances during the 1970s.
 &
  These instances revealed how the Cold War was evolving. Neither France nor China had any longer any reason to fear their recent Cold War adversaries, and so no longer felt dependent on their Cold War superpower allies. They were thus free to conduct an aggressive diplomacy in pursuit of their internal and international objectives. Only their scope for military action remained limited.
 &

Revolt of the post WW-II generation:

  Suddenly, the baby boomers came of age - world wide - in their vast numbers - and they did not like what they found in the adult world. In 1967 and 1968, there were a remarkable series of youth rebellions on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
 &

  The war in Vietnam was the principle catalyst for discontent in the West. It clearly could not be won given the strategic and tactical constraints imposed by Washington, and it was immensely costly. Yet the Pres. Lyndon Johnson still expected young Americans to fight it.
 &
  Other points of discontent in the West were the nuclear arms race, the hideous divisions of the Cold War world, perceptions of social and economic injustice, and sheer youthful rebelliousness toward authority and institutions. In the U.S., the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., further inflamed young people, and widespread race riots broke out.
 &
  In the East, another attempt at reform designed to loosen the deadening hand of communist totalitarian control quickly began to come unglued. In Czechoslovakia, the reforms were pushed far beyond what Moscow had intended. Ukrainian and East German communist leaders expressed their fears that the "Prague Spring" reforms would prove sufficiently infectious to threaten the ability of neighboring communist regimes to maintain totalitarian control.
 &

Many in the academic community had irrationally succumbed to left wing ideologies.

  In China, Mao loosed the "Cultural Revolution." He marshaled the youthful Red Guards to humble his potential party adversaries and restore revolutionary vitality. The process quickly got out of hand, and at one point threatened Mao, himself.
 &
  In both Czechoslovakia and China, the rebellions were quickly and ruthlessly repressed. Russian tanks restored communist discipline in Czechoslovakia, and rebellious Red Guard students were sent for "reeducation" to work in the countryside - setting back Chinese higher education for a generation.
 &
  Nevertheless, Mao, along with Cuban leaders Fidel Castro and Che Guevara became heroes to many of the rebellious young people in the West. Their rebelliousness was essentially romantic. They were educated but lacking in experience. Many in the academic community had irrationally succumbed to left wing ideologies. Thus, remarkably little institutional change of practical importance took place (although there was a definite turn to the ideological left in many of the humanities faculties). However, the confidence of leaders on both sides of the Cold War had been shaken, and efforts to find accommodations were intensified.
 &

Playing the China card:

  Military conflict broke out between China and Russia in 1969 at several contested points along their long border. Their growing rivalry had reached a boiling point.
 &

  Russia had by this time achieved nuclear parity with the U.S. - but instead of feeling more secure, it began to fear the growing power of a nuclear armed China opposite its sparsely populated Siberian territories. The communist giants had begun to see each other as primary security threats. Each looked to the U.S. as a comparatively non-threatening third player in a tri-polar world who might provide them with advantages.

  Communist ideology required that the capitalist U.S. be viewed as threatening. However, the U.S. military posture remained determinedly defensive - the U.S. was distant from the contested Siberian borders - and neither communist giant actually had any practical reason to feel such threat. This defensive, non-threatening posture became a huge strategic advantage for the U.S. Gorbachev thus felt confident that he could liquidate Russia's massive Cold War efforts as part of his effort to stop the financial bleeding of the Soviet economy. Without that, there was no chance that his reform efforts could succeed.
 &
  Of course, there is never any chance for successful reform of a massive, rigid, centralized socialist economy like that in Russia - as China's Deng Xiaoping had the wisdom to understand.

  For the U.S., on the other hand, Brezhnev and the Soviet Union clearly posed the more immediate threat. As Churchill and FDR had gratefully climbed into bed with that bloody butcher Stalin during WW-II, Pres. Richard Nixon now gratefully snuggled up to Mao.
 &
  A Russian diplomat quietly sounded out Washington reaction to a Russian preemptive nuclear strike against Chinese nuclear facilities, but Nixon had already decided that the survival of China - a major communist country - was now in the strategic interest of the U.S. (Mao had become a Tito after all - too late to prevent much bloodshed in Asia, but now a much bigger and more useful version of the original.)
 &
  Mao, in turn, began worrying about the conflicts raging across all his borders - with India, in Indochina, across the Taiwan Strait, and especially along his long northern border with the Soviet Union. The costly war in Vietnam had become an inconvenience. Support from Washington might prove useful in his new conflict with Moscow. The unexpected virulence of the Cultural Revolution had revealed the limits of his own grip on power in China.
 &

  Thus, the historic meeting in Beijing, in July, 1971, between Nixon and Mao, served a variety of interests for the two recent adversaries. The peace process in Vietnam began to bear fruit, Nixon's reelection chances soared, Mao was strengthened at home and his position against Russia was fortified.
 &
  However, Russia's position was not as strong as it appeared. The repression of the "Prague Spring" reforms in Czechoslovakia had been more difficult than expected. Russian officers had almost lost control of soldiers who were confronted by jeering crowds instead of the welcome that they had been led to expect.
 &
  Diplomatic repercussions had been severe, with protests in Yugoslavia, Rumania and China and among communist and other left wing parties around the world. There had even been a small demonstration in Red Square in Moscow. Popular discontent was evidently widespread throughout the Soviet empire, as economies stagnated and even began to decline under rigid socialist central management at a time when Western Europe prospered.
 &

Soft power factors:

&

  Stalin and Mao didn't have to worry about public opinion. Leaders of Leninist parties simply rule by terror - controlling all the avenues of public opinion and killing or exiling anyone who questions the party line. However, Stalin was dead and his henchmen were aging - as was Mao. Their successors would be forced to recognize the limits of Leninist party governance.
 &

The tactical requirements of the Cold War had quickly undermined any illusions in the U.S. that the conflict could be waged under moral and legal constraints similar to those applicable to domestic political contests.

  The major Cold War leaders in the West began losing battles with public opinion. De Gaulle in France was undermined by widespread youth protests in 1968, Lyndon Johnson was dissuaded from running for reelection in 1968 by widespread discontent and protests against the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal in 1974. Such events were damaging but not fatal for democracies because of their robust methods of succession. There were no convenient methods for dealing with such problems on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

  "The last years of the Nixon administration marked the first point at which the United States and the Soviet Union encountered constraints that did not just come from the nuclear stalemate, or from the failure of ideologies to deliver what they had promised, or from challenges mounted by the deceptively 'weak' against the apparently 'strong.' They came as well now from a growing insistence that the rule of law -- or at least basic standards of human decency -- should govern the actions of states, as well as those of the individuals who resided within them."

  The tactical requirements of the Cold War had quickly undermined any illusions in the U.S. that the conflict could be waged under moral and legal constraints similar to those applicable to domestic political contests. This was not unusual, Gaddis reminds us. Abraham Lincoln had flagrantly flouted legal constraints in his struggle to keep the nation from being torn apart. FDR flouted legal constraints in supporting those fighting the Axis powers prior to the entry of the U.S. into WW-II. All the Cold War presidents prior to Nixon had also justified "actions of questionable legality in the interests of national security."
 &
  However, the threats involved in the Watergate scandal were not really to national security. The threats were to Nixon's political administration. His agents - who were as dubious as his motives - bungled the Watergate operation and got caught. This enmeshed Nixon in a web of further illegal cover-up activities. (He also had the misfortune of having his tape recorded discussions discovered - without which the cover-up might have succeeded.)
 &

  The United Nations quickly proved itself of limited use during the Cold War. It could not have been otherwise, with the two veto-wielding super powers on opposite sides.

  The vetoes were not the problem. They were just a reflection of reality. The UN could only act where the action would not actively be opposed by a great power. The proof came early - in Korea - where Russian opposition thwarted UN efforts at no substantial cost to Russia. Russia would subsequently prevent the UN from getting involved at all wherever UN action would be counter to its interests.
 &
  Today, the UN as well as the nations of the "international community" stand by helplessly as Darfur is ravaged. Significant deposits of oil have been discovered in Sudan, and that is of far more importance to several of the powers on the UN Security Council than the fate of the people of Darfur. If the US chooses not to act in these matters, then the odds are that nobody will.
 &
  The US rightly declines the honor of being the world's policeman. It does extend diplomatic good offices broadly, but it has its hands full just protecting its own interests and those of its allies.

  After the onset of the Korean War, the UN's Cold War role was reduced to that of a debating society and propaganda forum, and a convenient point of diplomatic contact.
 &

  Intelligence and diplomatic maneuvers gained in importance as the military stalemate settled in. The Cold War adversaries quickly resorted to similar types of overt and covert actions.
 &
  The first test for the U.S. came in 1948, when the new Central Intelligence Agency was tasked with preventing an election victory for the communist party in war-ravaged Italy. The CIA covertly provided financing and expert advice in support of Italian political parties opposed to the communists.
 &
  This type of activity had not been included in its authorizing legislation. However, it soon thereafter was explicitly empowered to engage covertly - deniably - in "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."
 &
   Both sides employed military force in third world and client states, Gaddis points out. Russian tanks rolled into East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to rescue communist governments from their own people. U.S. covert action overthrew governments in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, and attempted to overthrow Castro in Cuba. Stalin's purges and Mao's Great Leap Forwards and subsequent Cultural Revolution killed tens of millions and blighted the lives of hundreds of million for domestic political purposes, while the U.S. aligned itself with a variety of authoritarian regimes to keep communists from coming to power.
 &
  The apparent similarities are quickly shattered by differences in degree clearly sufficient to demonstrate the differences in kind in the tactics used. None of the despots supported by the U.S. remotely compared with communist despots like Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or Kim Il-sung in sheer viciousness.
 &
 As Gaddis points out, the Cold War was waged on both sides with Machiavellian  tactics - but Stalin and Mao were at war with their own defenseless peoples as well as with the West.
 &

  As the CIA's activities mushroomed, it had both successes and failures. Inevitably, it became a fruitful target for anti-American left wing propaganda - a moral liability as well as a tactical asset.

  Gaddis is harsh in his evaluation of the value of CIA covert activities. He implies that Castro's successful rebellion in 1959 in Cuba and the takeover of Iran in 1979 by the radical Islamist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were in substantial part reactions to CIA activities in Latin America and Iran. However, it is doubtful that Castro would have done anything different had the CIA not been involved in Latin America - regardless of his use of the CIA as a propaganda target.  Nor is it knowable what would have happened in Iran in the absence of CIA activities.
 &
  The Shah of Iran was an invaluable asset for the West in the volatile Middle East for more than two decades during the heart of the Cold War. Propagandists never have any trouble finding or creating targets.

   CIA failures were always an embarrassment whenever the subterfuges involved in those activities were revealed. The shooting down of the U-2 spy plane over Russia and the failure of the Bay of Pigs landing in Cuba were particularly damaging. The American people don't like being lied to by their leaders - but readily forgave both both Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. (They have had long experience with the political subterfuges of campaign promises.) It took the Vietnam war to wreck the moral authority of American leadership.
 &

The credibility gap in the U.S.

  Engagement in the Vietnam War was later explained by Pres. Johnson as a tradeoff that was necessary to maintain the political capital needed for enactment of Great Society domestic programs.
 &

  A quick defeat in Vietnam, Johnson feared, would have prevented domestic political success. Gaddis lends some credence to this assertion.

  "The dilemma, then, was a cruel one. American interests in the Cold War, Johnson believed, required that the United States persist in Vietnam until it prevailed. But he was also convinced that he could not reveal what it would take to win without sacrificing the Great Society: the nation would not simultaneously support major expenditures for both 'guns' and 'butter.' So he sacrificed public trust instead. The term 'credibility gap' grew out of Johnson's sustained attempt to conceal the costs -- together with the pessimism with which the CIA and other intelligence agencies, as well as his own war planners, evaluated the prospects for success -- of the largest American military operation since the Korean War."

  This explanation leaves Gaddis puzzled over how Johnson could have believed he could get away with such a subterfuge. Sheer inertia is the only explanation he can come up with. Johnson just let the war continue because he didn't know what else to do.

  FUTURECASTS, too, is dubious about the Great Society assertion. As bad a picture as such an assertion presents of the Johnson administration, the reality is probably much worse. See, Lobel, "Presidential Judgment," segment on Pres. Lyndon Johnson.

  The costs were immense - in lives, money and morale. When Johnson entered the White House, the American people were willing to give their presidents great leeway in the conduct of the Cold War, and readily forgave periodic difficulties and defeats. However, knowing involvement in a war of attrition - on the mainland of Asia (over half a century after the Battle of Verdun demonstrated the need to avoid attrition tactics) - and the willingness to persist in it without hope of victory - fatally undermined support for Johnson's Cold War efforts, and bred public cynicism that constrained American efforts for the rest of the Cold War.

  "With the Vietnam War, the line between what was allowed overseas and what was permitted at home disappeared altogether. The Johnson administration found it impossible to plan or prosecute the war without repeatedly concealing its intentions from the American people, and yet the decisions it made profoundly affected the American people. Far from measuring up to 'its own best traditions' in fighting the Cold War, as Kennan had hoped it would, the United States in fighting the Vietnam War appeared to be sacrificing its own best traditions of constitutional and moral responsibility."

  The multiple abuses of authority of the Nixon administration leading up to the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of President Nixon, are briefly reviewed by Gaddis.

  "[Nixon's resignation] thereby acknowledged that the president of the United States was not in fact free to use whatever means he considered necessary to protect national security interests. There was, even within that sensitive realm, a standard of behavior that he alone could not determine. Contrary to what Nixon assumed, the president was not above the law."

  The result was a total loss of confidence in executive branch management of the Cold War. Over presidential vetoes, Congress passed the War Powers Act limiting to 60 days any future military deployment unless it received Congressional consent. Congress also barred expenditures for further combat operations in Vietnam - taking away for Pres. Gerald Ford the ability to provide South Vietnam with the logistical and airpower support it needed to fend off invasion from the North.
 &

  Then, Congress turned on the CIA for the multiple abuses of its authority - assassination plots, domestic surveillance operations, concealed subsidies, connections to Watergate, efforts to destabilize the elected socialist government of Chile. It began a process of constraining CIA powers that would continue for the next quarter century (until U.S. intelligence capabilities proved impotent to respond to the known terrorist threats that culminated in the attack on 9/11/01 - which ultimately forced a restoration of much of the authority previously constrained).

  "What had happened in Washington, - - - , was significant: distrust between the executive and legislative branches of government was now so deep that the United States Congress was passing laws -- always blunt instruments -- to constrain the use of United States military and intelligence capabilities. It was as if the nation had become its own worse enemy."

  The abandonment of any pretense of moral standards in international relations had been a feature of Cold War contests. Whole nations - Germany, Korea & Vietnam - had been divided and thousands of lives and vast resources had been expended to maintain those divisions. The U.S. had supported right wing dictatorships to prevent communist takeovers in third world countries. Mutually Assured Destruction held vast populations hostage to sustain the nuclear standoff.

  "As the Cold War wore on, [American strategists] went from regarding these compromises as regrettable to considering them necessary, then normal, and then even desirable. A kind of moral anesthesia settled in, leaving the stability of the Soviet-American relationship to be valued over its fairness because the alternative was too frightening to contemplate. Once it became clear that everybody was in the same lifeboat, hardly anybody wanted to rock it.
 &
  "This moral ambivalence was not moral equivalence. The United States never found it necessary to violate human rights on the scale of the Soviet Union, its Eastern European allies, and the Chinese under Mao Zedong had done."

The credibility gap in the Soviet Union:

&

   Russia was beginning to have its own credibility problems - not with its cowed citizenry, but with the intellectuals in its mid-level leadership. Many Soviet mid-level leaders had lived their entire lives influenced by the communist propaganda line and actually believed it. By the 1970s, it was increasingly clear that reality did not conform to the ideological script.
 &

Many Soviet mid-level leaders had lived their entire lives influenced by the communist propaganda line and actually believed it.

The communist ideology - with its ridiculous pretensions to scientific certitude - could not withstand criticism, and that ideology was the sole source of legitimacy for the regime.

  The Soviet system was a rigid absolute despotism. It could not adjust, as was - albeit painfully - occurring in the U.S. Instead, when adjustments were attempted, it shattered.
 &
  The violent crushing of the Prague Spring revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Russian tanks proved to be a disillusioning experience for many communist faithful. KGB chief Yuri Andropov warned the Politburo in 1974 that it would have to repress criticism by such influential dissidents as the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and prominent physicist Andrei Sakharov. The communist ideology - with its ridiculous pretensions to scientific certitude - could not withstand criticism, and that ideology was the sole source of legitimacy for the regime.
 &
  The Soviet regime had expended considerable diplomatic efforts to bolster its claims to legitimacy. As early as 1954, it sought Western confirmation of existing borders. Efforts towards détente slowly gathered steam as leaders on both sides sought to reduce Cold War risks, tensions and costs in Europe. It all came to a head at the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in the summer of 1975.
 &

"We are masters in our own house,' Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko assured Brezhnev. The Soviet Government and no one else would decide what the recognition of 'human rights and fundamental freedoms' actually meant."

  Brezhnev was willing to agree to a great deal to get the U.S. and its allies to publicly accept in writing the post WW-II borders in Europe. He believed such an agreement would prevent further uprisings in his European satellites, reinforce his "Brezhnev Doctrine" assertion of Russian rights to use force to crush such uprisings, deflate Russian dissidents, and even give him a reputation as a man of peace.
 &
  He thus accepted in return a requirement for advance notice of military exercises in Europe, the peaceful change of European political borders, the right of signatory states to join and leave alliances, and a human rights provision taken from the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

  "The Russians were admittedly nervous about this last condition, but it had originated with the West Europeans and the Canadians, not the Americans, which made it difficult to oppose. Moreover, the liberties it specified appeared in the largely unimplemented Soviet constitution: that too would have made rejection awkward. Nor would it be easy, solely on these grounds, to back out of a conference for which the U.S.S.R. had pressed for so long. So the Politburo agreed, with misgivings, to the inclusion of human rights provisions in the conference's 'Final Act.' 'We are masters in our own house,' Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko assured Brezhnev. The Soviet Government and no one else would decide what the recognition of 'human rights and fundamental freedoms' actually meant."

  The result of this last Quixotic provision would surprise everyone. In the U.S., Henry Kissinger and Pres. Ford were widely criticized for abandoning Eastern Europe and legitimizing Soviet injustice. Ronald Reagan condemned the agreement when opposing Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976, and Jimmy Carter condemned Ford similarly during the election campaign. Détente had become a bad word.
 &

However, many would be rewarded for their efforts by long years of imprisonment. The communist regimes didn't see any reason why they had to take the human rights requirements seriously.

Dissidents were using those human rights violations as a justification for initiating a system of passive resistance to subvert the communist regimes. The "double life" between the promise and the reality of Marxism-Leninism was being exposed, spreading discontent throughout the Soviet Union and its European satellites.

  In Russia, the Accords were published in Pravda and gradually became a manifesto for dissident and liberal movements.

  "Helsinki became, in short, a legal and moral trap. Having pressed the United States and its allies to commit themselves in writing to recognize existing boundaries in Eastern Europe, Brezhnev could hardly repudiate what he had agreed to in the same document -- also in writing -- with respect to human rights. Without realizing the implications, he thereby handed his critics a standard, based on universal principles of justice, rooted in international law, independent of Marxist-Leninist ideology, against which they could evaluate the behavior of his and other communist regimes."

  In a surprisingly short time, thousands in Russia and its East European satellites had joined "Helsinki Groups" dedicated to revealing and criticizing human rights violations.

  "Begun by the Kremlin in an effort to legitimize Soviet control in that part of the world, the Helsinki process became instead the basis for legitimizing opposition to Soviet rule."

  However, many would be rewarded for their efforts by long years of imprisonment. The communist regimes didn't see any reason why they had to take the human rights requirements seriously. But dissidents like Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia were using those human rights violations as a justification for initiating a system of passive resistance to subvert the communist regimes. The "double life" between the promise and the reality of Marxism-Leninism was being exposed, spreading discontent throughout the Soviet Union and its European satellites.
 &

Leadership that moved history:

&

  The Soviet system had become rotten to the core. Its failures, absurdities and atrocious actions against its own peoples had produced a generation permeated with cynicism about the system. It was hard but brittle - lacking all popular support - in government ranks as well as among the people. There were few who could object to efforts at reform.
 &

Soviet failures, absurdities and atrocious actions against its own peoples had produced a generation permeated with cynicism.

  Suddenly, giants appeared among the world's leaders - as had last happened during WW-II. With courage, eloquence, imagination, determination, and faith - they began to expose the disparities "between what people believed and the systems under which the Cold War had obliged them to live." These leaders did not accept the conventional wisdom of Cold War rigidity. As Gaddis describes them, they were "visionaries - saboteurs of the status quo" - who worked to "widen the range of historic possibility."

  "The gaps were most glaring in the Marxist-Leninist world: so much so that when fully revealed there was no way to close them other than to dismantle communism itself, and thereby end the Cold War."

  That the Soviet Empire would collapse not with a bang - as occurred later in Yugoslavia - but with a whimper - required all those leadership skills plus astounding - indeed miraculous - good fortune.

  After John Paul II, there was:

• Lech Walesa - daring to announce the formation of Solidarnosé trade union independent of Communist Party control;
• Margaret Thatcher - Britain's first woman Prime Minister - daring to tackle the tough left wing shackles restraining the British economy - who thus "revived the reputation of capitalism in Western Europe;"
• François Mitterrand  - who switched from his disastrous socialist policies to embrace market capitalism for economic revival in France;
• Deng Xiaoping - bouncing back from Mao's purges and, as Mao's successor, slowly, pragmatically introducing free enterprise and encouraging the Chinese people to "get rich;"
• Ronald Reagan - who restored the confidence of the American people, spooked senescent Kremlin leaders, and ultimately won the trust and cooperation of their young successor in managing the doomed effort to bring positive change to the Soviet communist system;
• Mikhail Gorbachev - who abandoned the rigid communist policies of his predecessors and "swept away communism's emphasis on the class struggle;" and,
• Helmut Kohl - who drove boldly ahead as the Soviet Union disintegrated, unified Germany, and spread the NATO security umbrella into Central Europe.

  "It was an age, then, of leaders who through their challenges to the way things were and their ability to inspire audiences to follow them -- through their success in the theater that was the Cold War -- confronted, neutralized, and overcame the forces that had for so long perpetuated the Cold War. Like all good actors, they brought the play at last to an end."

Ideological bondage:

  Strategic arms limitation treaties collapsed as new missile technologies advanced and were deployed. Distrust of Russian intentions created mounting political criticism in the U.S., and Congress imposed constraints on executive branch negotiations that thus undermined efforts to reach further agreements with the Soviets. Proxy conflicts kept popping up in third world countries - the most serious of which were in the Middle East. That volatile region was stabilized somewhat when Pres. Jimmy Carter brokered a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that had the effect of institutionalizing Soviet loss of influence in Egypt.
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  However, Soviet influence was expanding widely elsewhere in the third world. Reacting to the political traumas of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, the U.S. offered little resistance during the rest of the 1970s, and the Soviets took advantage of their opportunities. Vietnam, Angola, Somalia and Ethiopia fell under Soviet influence - and became dependent upon Soviet assistance - which the Soviets could afford only so long as the price of their oil exports remained high.
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  Success proved to be a heady brew inside the Soviet leadership. Socialism was on the march throughout the world, and reached its zenith at this time. (See, Muravchik, "Heaven on Earth," on the history of socialism.) It seemed that the class struggle was really playing out as Marx had predicted.
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  Ideological faith was remarkably high among the apparently hardened Soviet leadership. Gaddis explains that they could not turn down any opportunity for the acquisition of new dependent states. Yet it is hard to find any advantage that the Soviets might have gained from their African adventures, and the financial drain was becoming considerable.

  "It was an unwise strategy, however, because it led the Politburo to relinquish control over where, when, and how it deployed resources: it felt obliged to respond whenever Marxists competing for power called upon it to do so. The policy went well beyond support for 'genuine national liberation movements,' [ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly] Dobrynin noted; instead it amounted 'to interference on an ideological basis in the internal affairs of countries where domestic factions were struggling for power.' It was a kind of 'ideological bondage.' And it quickly became the victim of victories in Vietnam and Angola. 'As often happens in politics,' [Georgi] Arbatov has pointed out, 'if you get away with something and it looks as if you've been successful, you are practically doomed to repeat the policy. You do this until you blunder into a really serious mess.'"

  In 1977, this poorly thought out practice began to go awry. At Cuban urging, the Soviets abandoned one client - Somalia - in order to support another - Ethiopia - in a conflict between the two. The U.S. quickly moved into the vacuum in Somalia, gaining a useful naval base, while all the Soviets got was a larger client with even greater needs. Then came Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan:

&

  The Soviet blunder into Afghanistan was apparently precipitated by the ousting of the Shah, Reza Pahlevi, of Iran, and his replacement by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in January of 1979. This sparked a bloody Islamist revolt across the Afghan border in Herat. About 50 Russian advisers and their families were amongst the dead.
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  Détente supplemented by the pacifism of Pres. Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Congress, along with substantial cuts in U.S. defense spending, had done nothing to slake Soviet appetite for expansion (a result startlingly similar to that of Neville Chamberlain's pacifist policies four decades earlier). The invasion of far away Afghanistan in 1979 (like the invasion of Poland four decades before) finally stripped the ideological blinders from pacifist eyes.

  "Détente had failed, then, to halt the nuclear arms race, or to end superpower rivalries in the 'third world,' or even to prevent the Soviet Union from using military force again to save 'socialism,' as it had in Czechoslovakia twelve years earlier. That much was clear in January, 1980, a month in which President Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposed embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the U.S.S.R., asked for a significant increase in defense spending, announced that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics, and denounced the invasion of Afghanistan as 'the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War.'"

  This was a striking shift in posture for a Congress and president that had refused active support to a vital ally in Iran just months before and had stood aside as the Soviets had supported takeovers by communist regimes throughout the third world. Even Andre Gromyko was impressed by this turn of events. However, nobody considered it to be a serious setback for the Soviets, who were riding high on the expansion of their influence and surging oil revenues.
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  What nobody seemed to realize was that all the Soviet advances of the 1970s rested precariously on the high price of oil - which many (stupidly then - as today) thought was permanent. The U.S. decline had been driven by its defeat in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, soaring inflation (that was the inevitable outcome of Keynesian policies), and weak leadership. All of the major West European states were similarly afflicted.

  "The low point came in November of that year when Iranians invaded the United States embassy in Teheran, taking several dozen diplomats and military guards hostage. This humiliation, closely followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few weeks later, made it seem as though Washington was on the defensive everywhere, and Moscow was on a roll."

  That all of the trends were reversible - and indeed would be reversed in a dramatically short time - was beyond the ken of most of the world's political and intellectual leadership.
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The end of the Cold War:

  The seeds of the reversal of fortune for Moscow were already in place, Gaddis points out. Popular discontent was visible and growing throughout its European satellites despite the pervasive Soviet propaganda apparatus.
 &

  Moscow responded to this discontent by ordering an increase in consumer goods production and by approving imports of food and technology from West Europe. (This concern in itself was quite a change from the days of Stalin.) Indebtedness began to rise precipitously in the satellite nations, since they had little to sell to the West in return. The high oil prices that financed Moscow undercut its satellites. Oil revenues also hid the increasing weaknesses of the Soviet economy.

  "It was no source of strength for the U.S.S.R, to be sustaining a defense burden that may well have been three times that of the United States by the end of the 1970s, when its gross domestic product was only about one-sixth the size of its American counterpart."

  It seemed by 1980 that the aging Soviet leadership was letting Soviet strategy proceed on autopilot - directed only by its Marxist-Leninist ideology - an ideology that was totally out of touch with reality. (See, six articles on Marx, "Das Kapital," beginning with Marx, "Capital (Das Kapital)," (vol 1)(I).)
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Reagan marshaled words and applied his acting skills to dramatize Soviet weaknesses and Western strengths.

  The Cold War ended in China in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping outmaneuvered his adversaries to become Mao's successor. He began to slowly introduce capitalist market mechanisms to permit economic growth in China and keep the Chinese Communist Party in power. GDP quadrupled in 15 years, and China was easily feeding over 1.3 billion people, while the Russian command economy continued to decline precipitously.
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  The restoration of capitalism in Western Europe began when Margaret Thatcher revived the floundering British economy with policies of privatization, deregulation, facilitation of entrepreneurial commerce, reductions in tax rates and constraints on the excesses of labor unions. She reinforced Western opposition to the expansion of Soviet influence by speaking clearly about the failure of détente and the continued ambitions of the Soviets. "[Suddenly] words, not euphemisms, were being used again to speak truths, not platitudes." It was a style not associated with British leadership since Winston Churchill.
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  The restoration of U.S. resolve to win the Cold War began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. He was notoriously underestimated not only by adversaries but also by many of his friends. Reagan, Gaddis states, was "as skillful a politician as the nation had seen for many years, and one of its sharpest grand strategists ever." He marshaled words and applied his acting skills to dramatize Soviet weaknesses and Western strengths.

  "His strength lay in his ability to see beyond complexity to simplicity. And what he saw was simply this: that because détente perpetuated -- and had been meant to perpetuate -- the Cold War, only killing détente could end the Cold War."

  The crackup of Communist Party strangleholds on power behind the Iron Curtain began in 1980, when Lech Walesa rode a rising tide of popular discontent to establish the self-governing, independent Solidarity trade union in Poland. He was quickly strengthened by quiet but unmistakable support from Pope John Paul II.
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  Both became targets of a Bulgarian assassin who succeeded in shooting and nearly killing the Pope. Soviet leaders undoubtedly authorized this plot, Gaddis notes. It was a typical Leninist response to the rising dangers of popular unrest that began to spread to other regions of their empire.
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  The end of the Brezhnev Doctrine came towards the end of 1981 when the Politburo secretly decided not to intervene militarily in Poland. The Russian army had its hands full in Afghanistan, a formidable Polish army undoubtedly would oppose any such intervention, Western sanctions would be severe, and the Russian economy was staggering under its many burdens. The price of oil was already plunging (as the U.S. finally pulled the plug on the Keynesian policies that had caused national and worldwide inflation and economic dislocation).
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  However, threats are cheap. By threatening military intervention, they induced Polish Communist leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to crack down on Solidarity. Walesa was arrested, and the crackup was postponed.
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  Reagan, too, survived an assassination attempt - from a homegrown assassin - not one inspired by Moscow. He recovered quickly, and was able to continue using words and drama to undermine acceptance of détente and the conventional wisdom about the permanence of the hideous Cold War world.
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  Addressing the British Parliament in 1982, he pointed out that not one of the totalitarian Communist satellite regimes in East Europe had taken root among the people. They all still needed support from bayonets. With his "evil empire" speech in 1983, Reagan "completed a rhetorical offensive designed to expose what Reagan saw as the central error of détente: the idea that the Soviet Union had earned geopolitical, ideological, economic, and moral legitimacy as an equal to the United States and the other western democracies in the post-World War II international system.
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  Beyond mere rhetoric, Reagan began to bleed the Soviet system financially. He knew of its financial and economic weakness. When the Soviets declined his arms reduction offers, he doubled U.S. defense spending, deployed new missiles in Europe, repudiated MAD, and initiated his strategic defense "star wars" initiative - all against vociferous - even contemptuous - domestic and West European opposition. The stability that was the objective of détente had become immoral. 

  "If the U.S.S.R. was crumbling, what could justify continuing to hold East Europeans hostage to the Brezhnev Doctrine -- or, for that matter, continuing to hold Americans hostage to the equally odious concept of Mutual Assured Destruction? Why not hasten disintegration?"

  His critics may have sneered, but the Soviet leadership did not. They viewed the Strategic Defense Initiative as a real threat - in a realm of technology in which they were hopelessly behind.

  "Having exhausted their country by catching up in offensive missiles, they suddenly faced a new round of competition demanding skills they had no hope of mastering. And the Americans seemed not even to have broken into a sweat."

  In the Fall of 1983, the regular NATO fall maneuvers involved high level leadership participation. Yuri Andropov and other Soviet leaders had become so spooked by Reagan, that they prepared for a nuclear attack. The Able Archer maneuver crisis was perhaps the most dangerous moment since the Cuban missile crisis. British intelligence uncovered the misapprehension in time to defuse the situation, but both sides decided to resume arms control negotiations. However, aged Russian leaders kept dying in rapid order, until in 1985, the 54 year old Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

  The great age difference was due in large part to the decimation of the intermediate leadership generation in WW-II and the Stalin purges - a circumstance that proved most fortuitous for peace during the 1980s.

Gorbachev would shatter the status quo without knowing how the pieces might reassemble.

  Gorbachev was different. He was smart, personable, educated and earnest. He knew and readily admitted the many failures of the Marxist-Leninist system, was determined to impose radical changes - but was uncertain as to what exactly would work.
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  Unlike Deng in China, Gorbachev sought to reform the socialist command economy rather than to replace it with a capitalist market system. This was a strategic error of the highest magnitude that led to his ultimate failure. Because of his ideological belief in socialism, he could neither overlook its failures nor contemplate its termination. "He was at once vigorous, decisive, and adrift." He would shatter the status quo without knowing how the pieces might reassemble.
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  After his first meeting with Reagan, Gorbachev came to another startling conclusion. Abandoning Marxist dogma, he realized that Reagan and the U.S. would never attack Russia. Arms control was thus placed solidly on the negotiating agenda.
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Irresponsibility, slipshod work, drunkenness, carelessness were everywhere, and could no longer be hidden.

  The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power complex in 1986 laid bare the rot at the core of the communist economic system. Irresponsibility, slipshod work, drunkenness, carelessness were everywhere, and could no longer be hidden. With new resolve and greater support from his colleagues who knew not what else to do, Gorbachev attacked the problems first with glasnost - publicity - and then with perestroika - restructuring.
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  Arms control negotiations scored incomplete breakthroughs until, in December, 1987, agreement was reached on the dismantling of all intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe. "It was Reagan," Gaddis concludes, "more than anyone else, who made this happen."
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  Reagan and Sec. of State George Shultz also went to great lengths to explain to Gorbachev and scholars in Russia the weaknesses of command economic systems and the strengths of market capitalism. Gorbachev was receptive - but unlike Deng in China, couldn't make the change. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he acknowledged his failure.

  "The Achilles heal of socialism was the inability to link the socialist goal with the provision of incentives for efficient labor and the encouragement of initiative on the part of individuals. It became clear in practice that a market provides such incentives best of all."

Reagan was bleeding Russia financially from a dozen oozing wounds.

  Meanwhile, Reagan was supporting resistance movements against Soviet clients all around the world - in East Europe, Afghanistan, Central America, Africa and elsewhere (often against Congressional opposition). He was bleeding Russia financially from a dozen oozing wounds. He tried to convince Gorbachev of the need to liquidate the "evil empire." Gorbachev could not admit weakness, because he knew the Soviet Union no longer had the ability to hold the empire together by military force and was therefore dependent on threats.
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  However, this was clearly unsustainable. Gorbachev quietly began warning satellite leaders that they had better look to their own resources. They were on their own.
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  The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan came in 1985, and support for third world Marxist clients was greatly reduced. Gorbachev had to stop the financial bleeding.
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  Speaking to the UN in 1988, Gorbachev announced dramatic unilateral reductions in Soviet Warsaw Pact forces, and the renunciation of the use of force as a means of maintaining influence. Suddenly, the door was open for the peoples and governments of East Europe to seek their own destiny.
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The walls come tumbling down:

  The end came suddenly. The suddenness caught everyone by surprise - even those leaders who had played the most vigorous roles in making it possible. And it was practically bloodless - because Gorbachev made the decision not to obstruct it.
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The end was practically bloodless - because Gorbachev made the decision not to obstruct it.

Individuals, in their multitudes, suddenly had room for personal maneuver and quickly took the steps open to them to seek personal advantage.

Deng wanted a substantial degree of economic freedom sufficient to permit the economy to prosper - but without any political freedom that might be used to challenge Communist Party rule.

  The end was entrepreneurial. Individuals, in their multitudes, suddenly had room for personal maneuver and quickly took the steps open to them to seek personal advantage.

  "[They] were ordinary people with simple priorities who saw, seized, and sometimes stumbled into opportunities. In doing so, they caused a collapse no one could stop. Their 'leaders' had no choice but to follow."

• First were the Hungarians - in June 1989 - reaffirming the justness of their 1956 rebellion - and then dismantling the barbed wire on the border with Austria.
• Then came Poland - permitting Solidarity candidates to contest an election on June 4, 1989 - won massively by Solidarity candidates. In August, Solidarity was permitted to form a government to attempt to deal with the economic and financial mess left by over four decades of communist misrule.
• Even in Russia - elections for a new Congress of People's Deputies brought a vociferous opposition to Moscow that harangued the government on nationwide television.
• In China, on the other hand, Deng knew what he wanted - a substantial degree of economic freedom sufficient to permit the economy to prosper - but without any political freedom that might be used to challenge Communist Party rule. He sent in the tanks to crush demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Would other Communist leaders follow this precedent? 
• In Germany, Erich Honecker applauded the resolute measures taken to oppress dissent in China. He and his secret police chief, Erich Mielke, had no intention of betraying socialism. But hundreds of thousands of East Germans were only too anxious to betray socialism. They were voting with their feet - fleeing through Hungary to the West.

  Gorbachev tried to warn Honecker of the need for rapid reforms in East Germany, but Honecker knew only Leninist methods - rule by terror. However, conductor Kurt Masur stepped in to negotiate a withdrawal of security forces sent to quell protests in Leipzig. There would be no Tiananmen Square crackdown in East Germany, and Honecker's regime was doomed. He resigned on October 18, 1989.
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Krenz was occupied like a good bureaucrat in a Central Committee meeting.

  There was massive confusion within the East German government. Egon Krenz succeeded Honecker, but had no intention of trying to use force against mushrooming dissidence. He tried to appease the people by relaxing the requirements for travel to the West, but the official who briefed the press misunderstood the decree - and the immediate removal of all travel restrictions was announced instead.
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  Crowds gathered at the Berlin Wall crossing points. Nobody had deigned to give the guards any instructions. Krenz was occupied like a good bureaucrat in a Central Committee meeting. When the crowds became too large to control, one of the gates was opened - and soon Berliners from both sides were dancing around and on top of the Wall, hammering at it and tearing at it with chisels.
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  The Wall had been breached - the East German government did not have the stomach for repression - and Gorbachev applauded their restraint.

• Bulgaria was next. On November 10, Todor Zhivkov - who had ruled since 1954 - stepped down. The Communist Party was soon negotiating with opposition leaders to establish procedures for free elections.
• Czechoslovakia erupted in demonstrations on November 17. Soon, a coalition government had replaced Communist Party rule. Alexander Dubcek - a hero of the 1968 Prague Spring revolt - became chairman of the National Assembly, and the new president was Václav Havel.
• In Romania, Nicolai Ceausescu tried Tiananmen-like repression. Ninety seven people were killed before military men joined the vast crowds. Ceausescu and his wife were captured, tried and executed.

  Pres. Bush (I) and Gorbachev viewed these events with astonishment. They had been totally surprised by the speed and direction of events. However, they both knew that they needed each other if a stable geopolitical framework was to be maintained.
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  Bush (I) did not celebrate the victory in the Cold War, and Gorbachev continued to refrain from action - even as German reunification quickly took center stage. The overwhelming support of the German people made it inevitable, but there were leaders on both sides of the old Cold War divide who worried about a suddenly reunified and revived Germany in the center of a Europe with open borders.
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  Gorbachev was not the only leader ultimately relieved that the reunified Germany would remain securely inside NATO - and that American troops would NOT be withdrawn from Europe. Unlike after WW-II, it would be Soviet troops that would be withdrawn.
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The end of the Soviet Union:

  Gorbachev had become wildly popular - outside the Soviet Union. Inside the Soviet Union, economic conditions kept going from bad to worse. He was jeered at the 1990 May Day parade.
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  The collapse was not stopping at the Soviet border. The Baltic and Trans-Caucasian republics soon were falling away from Soviet rule.
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Gorbachev had presided over a rapid spread of political freedom, but not over either economic freedom or the economic improvements that were impossible without it.

  The huge Russian Republic elected its own president - Boris Yeltsin - in June, 1991. He immediately became Gorbachev's chief rival.
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  Unlike Gorbachev, he had a strategic vision. He wanted to abolish the Communist Party, dismantle the Soviet Union, and make Russia an independent, democratic, capitalist state. Gorbachev didn't know how to respond to these events. And neither did Bush (I) who was still committed to his support for Gorbachev.
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  The problem was that Gorbachev had presided over a rapid spread of political freedom, but not over either economic freedom or the economic improvements that were impossible without it. With economic conditions still collapsing around him, he quickly lost all popular support.
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  In August, there was a botched coup attempt against Gorbachev. Dramatically climbing on a tank to address the soldiers and crowds, Yeltsin put it down. It was now Yeltsin who was the dominant leader in Moscow - and the Soviet Union was doomed - along with its Communist Party and Congress of People's Deputies.
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Gorbachev was without a country.

  The independence of the Baltic States was recognized, and Ukraine, Armenia and Kazakhstan proclaimed independence. Gorbachev was without a country. He transferred the nuclear attack codes to Yeltsin and signed the decree that officially terminated the U.S.S.R. on December 25, 1991.
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  Gorbachev had failed to find a practical way to reform socialism. He had lost his empire and his nation - but he had gained a Nobel prize and the eternal gratitude of all knowledgeable people everywhere. (For another view of the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, see Kotkin, "Armageddon Averted." For a picture of the rot that seven decades of Communist rule left behind in Russia, see, Meier, "Black Earth.")

  Today, freedom and prosperity blossom in those East European nations that have embraced market capitalism and have joined the European Union - but Russia slides back into repression. It is men from the KGB that today rule in Moscow - using KGB methods against opponents. They are sustained as in the 1970s by high oil prices. The price rise is not confined to oil, but is general among commodities - a result again of resort to Keynesian policies in the U.S. and the inflationary forces they inevitably unleash around the world.
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  The next election cycle will reveal a lot about the current status of governance in Russia. It is terribly important for future prospects in Russia that regular election cycles be continued - even if they are far from western standards - indeed, even if they are dominated by the KGB party - just as long as they are not a total sham.

  The wave of the future at the beginning of the Cold War seemed to many - including Orwell - to be authoritarianism and communism and socialism. They feared that wars would spin out of control into nuclear nightmares.
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  At the end of the Cold War, capitalism and democracy - economic and political freedom - turned out to be the waves of the future - and major wars between nuclear powers had proven capable of restraint. (Whether that will remain true during the conflicts of the 21st century remains to be seen.)